Forget about Havok, meet Ageia

[BFG]

http://www.ageia.com/technology.html

Not sure if someone put a heads up on this a while ago, but id forgoten about it (and though others might to) and since what with the recent discussions regarding Havok, Mac Games, and Aspyr ... Thought people would be interested to take a look at the AGEIA Physics engine, and most impressively the AGEIA PhysX PPU (Physics Processing Unit)  .. yes you read it right - a Chip dedicated just for physics... CPU, GPU, PPU here we come!

PS Did i mention its also also the first and only multithreaded physics API - couldn't be better for all our DP Macs!!

PPs is it for mac? You bet it is - infact there are Mac games allready indevelopment using the Ageia SDK - take a look at "stoked rider"

[:MoD:Shade]

I'm too lazy to read everything but does this have to be in the computer seperatly or will it be on the video card?

[BFG]

The PPU is the Physics equivalent of your Graphics card - ie a seperate card which means that the GPU  can offload all the intensive Physics calculations off to the PPU

But the AGEIA SDK is the (better) equivelant of what you will see if you look at Havok.

[BTs_Mysterio]

The PPU stuff I was trying to ram down everyones throats a few months back, but with little luck. No mac support listed? for same.

[BFG]

Given that Aspyr is listed as a Main Partner i think we can safely say the Mac market is in the picture although its going to be a PCI - X card i think

[BTs_Mysterio]

PCI-X is what we have in G5s

PCI-e is PCI Express, which we don't have

[BFG]

Yeah sorry i was thinking one thing and typing the other!! Apparently there will be a standard PCI and also a PCI Express x1/x4 Version

http://www.gdhardware.com/interviews/agiea/shot1.htm


The Physics Processing Unit (PPU) is a dedicated processing unit that was built from the ground up to accelerate the algorithms required for physically based simulations. This includes things such as Rigid Body Dynamics, Collision Detection, Fluid Simulation, Soft Bodies and Fracturing of objects. It will revolutionize your CPU/GPU system by unlocking the potential of the system by allowing each of the processing components to do what is best at. The PPU makes the games move and interact! We are really bridging the gap between the visual appearances and the movement of games that should go along with the graphics of today.

The PPU is different from but complementary to the CPU/GPU as follows: It is dependent on the nature of application for which the processor has been optimized. For instance, a GPU have been designed efficiently to do 3D transform in a highly parallelized pipelined fashion to speed lighting effects, object transforms and rendering output to the users Monitor, So GPU -- How things Look. The CPU on the other hand is a general purpose device designed to support a wide profile of application and most efficiently supply performance to a wide spectrum of application but not optimized to run a particular application at it most optimal performance.

The best way to understand the difference of the three processors is how they interact with the game engine. The CPU drives the core thinking of how the game respond to the player, it performs housekeeping and scripting functions. The PPU is designed to drive how objects move and interact with virtual world. So PPU – How Things move and Interact. One view of the CPU is it is an open highly flexible computation engine which enables programmers to develop wide class of applications quickly and efficiently; the PPU and GPU are developed to run a set of focused specific class of applications, exceling in their respective algorithms with highest possible performance.

[cO.twist]

I haven't really kept up with this thread, but i read an article that talks about both of these engines, as well as other upcoming stuff.  It's an interview w/ a chick that works for Aspyr, interviewed by the people at macologist.org

http://www.macologist.org/portal.php?topic_id=1224

[(SiX)Sheixhundt]

yep...figured as much..
To quote our Buddy Glenda....Fuck the Mac faithful..they aint makin us any money..

"But given the reality of the current Mac market, there is a limit to the amount of engineering time you can put into a game. We've already scaled back the number of titles we are doing for the Mac in 2005"

Too bad, was hoping for more but thats the state of the industry.
Demo-ing stuff is ok i guess but this goes to restate the case of please for the love of God, buy games, and as far as a contiguous (ie gameranger) community goes, Buy premium..Ok yeah, i dont really want to hear your reasnos why you won't... Scott this, Scott that blah fucking blah..cuz I dont really care..(bottom line, he provides a fairly well-crafted service,{{that takes a fair amount of man hours to support}} that you arent going to find anywhere else in the mac world with a free option) and if your idea of fun is staring anonymously in a massive list of 8023820348 servers, and NOT getting to know a single soul...then you go girl, go have fun on IGAMe...yeah thats gonna be a joke. I can tell by seeing what they proposed for the RVS anticheat. ha-fucking-ha..shit, they likely stole that code from a previous project that never worked either for detecting hooks, dll injections and aliased TXT files loaded thru the console...
personally, Im thankful to have met the people i converse with on a regular basis..and omg them CUTE LITTLE FUCKING FOREIGNERS..(unless their bashing my President, which is old, like capri pants, and hair bands) Basically i guess i just like to hear em talk. BFG the Brit, Nik the Bulgarian, Ass and jolly , our asian rim compadres...etc etc...love it!!!!!! oh...and them kooky germans.....love em all.

The mac community has been noted for its hypocrisy in both warezing final versions of games, and relyin on the free route AND THEN complaining about the lack of new features (ie gameranger - refusal to re-up prem) or posting in game forums of games they stole for bug complaints, and creative yet sarcastic criticism...get real. Same goes for the warezed and serialized games sitting on oh so many GR desktops.

Well, for absolutely sure, we have put ourselves in this position..so complaining is pointless. Unless like me your complaining about the free-ride mentality and its affect on our community.  (of which i HAVE been guilty of, until i realized that i was only hurting the mac games availabilty, and willingness of developers to gamble on our platform.)-- i stil support using it as a means to demo games that you eventually BUY, however..to a certain degree at least.

And as far as Ageai (sp) I looked at Stoked Rider, and well, the sucess rate or lack of it for XIII should tell you about how far thats gonna go. This game was an outflow product of a ad campaign that they are gonna try to milk for the extra buck and they started this back in '95..um guys, that aint the way to build a following..thats just riding a fad..nine years late. Cell shaded animation is NOT the wave of the future, even if it is a cool game.

Did you have any other titles that you were aware of that utilizze that engine or unit??

Im curious.

[BFG]

Ah i wish i did Shiex (i gotta agree regarding XIII - great game etc etc but cell shading really isn't going to go a long long way... and stoked rider - well the movie didn't blow me away) ... The only engine we know is definatly going to be supporting/using this thing (the physics Engine) is Unreal 3 - Which we should be pretty happy about given the likelihood that so many many games are going to be running this engine when is finally makes its way to a release.

MP for mac would suck without Gameranger, i look-forward to seeing what happens with iGame but my gut says we'll never quite see it - either released or supported and maintained like GR. As for the warzing etc ... couldn't agree more, we arn't going to get good ports, good games, etc etc unless people pay for the games and support the companies that provide us with a mac gaming industry!
- like u said, its one thing to try before you buy.. its another thing to try try forget to buy

ps. I have never ever in my life been called a cute little fucking foreigner hehe 

[BTs_Mysterio]

UE3 is already in porting BFG. As well as the dev tools for moding or making games (last part there I don't really know, but dev tools implies that right?). UE3 isn't a graphics engine BFG, UE3 is a Graphics/Physics Engine. The most advanced in both categories. Native support for multicores, native support for PPUs, and of course you can max settings it on a NVIDIA 6600 GT.

iGame is not MIA, I can assure you of that. From what we all can see they are a small group, and look at how long it took scot to put GR together... long long time ago that is, then yo get it to this point.

Warez, I will never stand against it until demos come back to mac games.

[BFG]

Myst think you misunderstood my post there:

There is no information at this time whether a Mac version of the Ageia PhysX PPU will ever be produced. However the Ageia Physics Engine is two fish in the basket - a) a standalone Pysics engine and b) the link for the PPU  . the U3 Engine is supporting the Ageia PPU -

NovodeX, the API for the Ageia PPU will make use of the PPU if it is present, but will also work normally as a Physics engine without the PPU - its not hardware dependent.

[cO.twist]

Quoting Mysterio (i cant get my quotes to work)--> Warez, I will never stand against it until demos come back to mac games.

That's probably one of the dumbest things I've read in a while.  You guys need to stop being cheap asses and buy the damn games.

AT LEAST you can 'get around' the system by downloading the Mac version, and buy the pc version (which is usually a lot cheaper..except FtF) and use that serial.

racist comment deleted, please read forum rules again. - voo

[*DAMN Elandrion]

[...] You guys need to stop being cheap asses and buy the damn games.

AT LEAST you can 'get around' the system by downloading the Mac version, and buy the pc version (which is usually a lot cheaper..except FtF) and use that serial.

but that way you'd still be a cheap ass, because the mac publisher/porting house wouldn't see a single cent.


edited twists racist comment- voo

[(SiX)Sheixhundt]

Warez, I will never stand against it until demos come back to mac games. -myst-

Ghr demo, UT2004demo, Cod Demo, MoHSpearhead Demo, Fa18 demo, Wolfenstein Demo, AmericasArmy, Xplane Demo, Battlefield Demo, StarTrek Elite Force...

What in the fuck you talking about no mac demos??  --weak-ass argument----

That said, These are all porters and producers that can take a loss leader to get some interest in their games, the rest rely on omg...sales and advertising..what an awkward concept.

Read carefully so you don't get all mad here myst, i totally own up that ive done it in the past and I can't really judge you, but ive changed perspectives about the need to buy all my games, even if they end up in the closet...BECAUSE I WANT MORE NEW GAMES!!

OK...to be fair if you mean exclusively for demoing games you plan on buying, I couldnt throw stones for using it to DEMO TEST games, but still..its not the optimal way to keep the river flowing..and right now, its almost dry. Even then, the mature market assumes some risk to the buyer in every case almost..try returning any store bought app youve opened..but 'didnt like'. And you wanna talk expensive games? they are expensive BECAUSE of pirating,not in spite of it...so dont tell me the games are too expensive for you.


 ..No release dates on The Next Unreal, RVS4, GHR 3(not sure) and Battlefield for mac? .Theres probably a MARKET driven reason that we dont get served or treated better by the gaming producers.....so maybe in the end its in our interest to spend a little upfront to keep it moving..

Theres actually a REASON that they say nothing good is free..and if you MAKE it free, youll fuck it up til it aint GOOD no more. Ball's in your court.



 

[BFG]

If the sales of mac games doubled or even tripled  there is no question that it would completely transform the mac gaming market.

[BTs_Mysterio]

I never said I was for warez, just not against those who do.

[Civrock]

http://www.insidemacgames.com/features/view.php?ID=351

State of the Game - Wreaking Havok

If you've owned a Mac for as long as I have (20 years to be exact), you know that being a Mac gamer can be challenging at times. We've had our ups and downs over the years but recently, especially in the last few years, things have been looking pretty good for Mac gaming. Apple is selling a ton of iPods and Macs and game publishers are cranking out as many games as possible.

But as good as things have gotten, major bumps along the road have appeared. One that has crept up recently has been the discussion of many Mac gamers and developers alike. How bad is this bump? Well, let me put it this way. Today's second biggest threat to a healthy Mac gaming market is Havok (piracy, in case you were wondering, is the first), the physics game engine used by popular games such as Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, Halo 2, and oh yes, Half-Life 2. In at least a few cases, a few Mac ports have been shelved because of a lack of a Mac version of Havok. Ever wonder why Deus Ex 2 never made it to the Mac? Havok. To make matters worse, upcoming games such as Age of Empires III and HellGate and possibly dozens of other games will be using Havok.

It takes no genius to see that the Havok problem is now dire. So, what exactly is said problem? Why isn't Havok available for the Mac? As you might expect, it comes down to money. According to industry sources, the folks at Havok want a six figure dollar amount for Havok Mac. The issue, of course, is that there's no way any Mac game publisher could afford this, especially when you consider that the Mac publisher has to pay a PC publisher the rights for a game. Imagine having to pay $50,000 for the Mac rights to a title, then having to turn around and pay $150,000 just to have Havok on the Mac (my dollar figures are just examples, folks, I don't know the actual numbers).


Ok, now here's the worst part of it. According to my sources, the Havok code is already available on the Mac. That's right. It's pretty much ready to go. Havok just needs to get paid. The issue at hand, it seems, is the amount of money Havok wants for their precious physics code.

With the Mac gaining popularity, it seems to me that companies such as Havok and GameSpy are trying to take advantage of the situation by raising their prices to such astronomical levels that just don't make sense. Would you charge $100 to feed one dog or $5 each to feed 100?

But as we all know, man is not always rational, especially when it comes to money. Sure, we could just say, "man, those Havok guys are f'ing greedy", but I'm sure in their own little world, and in their own business sense, in order to have Havok on the Mac, they need...no...demand to hear that magical term: "return on investment."

But hey, the Mac is cool! You have to let us have Havok! Pfft, no way. Sympathy isn't going to work either. Havok is run by super smart mathematicians and PhD's who are in the business of calculating how much money they can make with their spiffy physics code. Can you blame them for trying?

Let us for argument's sake say that Havok won't budge on the price unless someone ponies up the big dough and pays Havok what they want. In today's Mac gaming market where piracy is rampant (well, on all platforms), a publisher like Aspyr can't afford to pay that kind of money for a physics engine. Hmm, ok, who else has gobs of money and billions of dollars in cash? How about Apple? Apple is interested in seeing more Mac gaming titles appear on the Mac, so why not have Apple pick up the bill? Certainly if Apple had thoughts of buying Bungie at one point for a few million dollars a few years back, then they can sure afford a paltry hundred grand to pay for Havok on the Mac.

Apple has been deeply involved in getting Havok on the Mac. How deep is something I'll leave up to your imagination. But Apple simply has no business paying for physics engines. This is not a purchase the Board of Directors is going to approve. "You want us to buy a physics engine so that someone like Aspyr can benefit from it?" As much as it might makes sense to you and I, Apple is not in the business of paying every 3rd party developer that comes along just for the sake of having them bring their tools to the Mac.

Some have argued that Havok is a flash in the pan and that it will eventually die and be replaced by some other physics engine. While that may eventually come true, Havok has certainly caught the eye of many big developers such as Valve and Bungie. The danger that Havok might be around for quite a while is there, and they don't look like the type that will just go away just because we wish them to go away.

Unfortunately, the burden falls on Mac game publishers such as Aspyr and MacSoft. They need to keep reminding the developers they work with that if they use Havok for the PC product, there's no way to do a Mac version. The burden also falls on PC developers. Take Ensemble Studios. Here's a company who has had every one of their games ported to the Mac. With Age of Empires III, that could change if Ensemble ends up using Havok in the final version of the game. You better believe that the PC developers know that there is no Mac version and we can only hope they find alternatives to Havok.

Of all the problems that face Mac gaming these days, it's incredible that middle-ware such as GameSpy and Havok are the ones causing the most problems. But in an industry where cutting-edge technology and eye candy can make such an amazing difference in a game, middle-ware is here to stay.

Is Mac gaming going to die because of Havok? Nah, no way. Sure, we will miss some of those games, but there will be others. And over time, things do tend to fix themselves, as evidenced by the recent release of America's Army 2.3 for the Mac. With a little pressure from the Mac and PC publishers, the Havok folks might just bend...they just might.

(Havok declined to provide comment for this article).

[BTs_Mysterio]

Oh well, they will give in eventually. Or die in their failing state.

Side note, Civic, will you ever comment on the stuff you post(report)?

[BFG]

the article was from IMG